Mika the mole wants to expand his molehill home and needs your help to do so! Using polyomino shapes akin to those in a Tetris game, you'll add shapes one at a time to lengthen the tunnel network whilst trying to collect treasure, flowers and worms to power up.
We saw Chris and the lovely team from Unfringed at UK Games Expo as we were looking around the show preview, knowing how popular his previous title Zuuli had been and that Oink had bought the rights to it, we were keen to see what they were bringing out. When we saw it was a flip and write game, I was immediately intrigued and couldn't wait to give the game a try.
First Impressions
The box is really colourful and eyecatching with cute artwork and block writing mimicing the polyomino shapes. It stands out on the shelf and despite not being a huge box, it certainly still has impact. Inside, there is a really thick pad of paper maps along with the cards for bonus objectives, tunnels and even some extra cards so you can create your own custom cards for tunnel shapes. I loved this little touch as it makes the game that little bit more unique and offers flexibility. The rules were easy to follow and included several diagrams to clarify anything that might possibly be misconstrued which I really liked and made it crystal clear what it was explaining.
Game Play Overview
Molehill Meadows is played over 3 phases: Initialisation, Tunneling and scoring. During the initialisation phase the top 3 cards of the deck will be revealed one at a time and all players will draw these in any location they choose on their map as stones following placement rules... 1. the shape cannot go off the edge of the map 2. It can be flipped, rotated, mirrored in any orientation you wish 3. (for stone placement only) any treasure, worms, loose ground and flowers are ignored 4. each new shape can only be connected to the existing tunnel network by a single face (each shape is made up of multiple squares and each side of a square is called a face). Once all additional stones are drawn, the initialisation phase is complete and you move onto tunnelling. During tunnelling, you will reveal the remaining 15 cards of the deck one at a time and all players will draw each shape before the next one is revealed. These shapes drawn must follow the same placement rules as the stones but should be drawn differently to identify them as tunnels rather than stones and must start at the central molehill. Each treasure covered up in the process is worth a number of treasure points which should be marked off on the treasure track, worms on the worm track which will activate various powers once full and each loose soil covered up is marked off the corresponding track for negative points, whilst any flowers covered up will count towards the bonus objectives at the end of the game. Once all tunnel cards have been added to all players maps, move onto the final phase of the game: scoring! Using the handy scorepad on your sheets, add up your scores and the player with the most points wins.
Pros and Cons
Molehill Meadows is simple in concept yet challenging to master, the flip and write mechanic is well explained and easy to pick up yet trying to figure out where to place the next tunnel is a challenge in itself. Sadly this game does not come with pencils/pens, but seeing as most people have several lying around the house, this isn't a huge issue but is certainly something to bear in mind when going to conventions. It also only comes with 1 design of map, however, the placing of the stones at the start of each game along with not using all the tunnel or objective cards each game, gives enough variety and variability to negate this.
Final Verdict
Overall, I think this is a really lovely flip and write game. The theming ties in well, the components are of a good quality and it has enough challenge and variability to make it replayable and accessible to anyone. The box size and weight makes it ideal for travelling and as a flip and write game, it's a great starter or lighter weight game to settle you into an evening.
In conclusion, we would rate this game a 9.3/10
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